Snapshot
by Cap'n Coree
Summary: Some moments are frozen in time, some just freeze you.
1. Ruined

Snapshot

Cap'n Coree

1: Ruined

Naota leaned over the edge of the bridge, his eyes following the current of the river. Although the smog had long ago cleared, and now the sky lolled freely above their heads, all of its splendor finally revealed to the people bellow, Naota still only watched the ground. His eyes dragging across the litter and wreckage that no one seemed in a hurry to pick up.

He was seventeen years old, and it was his first day of his last summer vacation.

Like Haruko, Mamimi had left to pursue her own dreams. She was enrolled in a university a ways away, studying photography. She would be home soon for her own vacation, mostly to visit Naota, for whatever good it may do.

Only Ninamori remained to watch Naota despondently lean across the rail, looking for all the world like he might slip over the edge.

_'You think he'd want to watch the sky, just in case..' _Ninamori frowns, rising from her hidden perch among the grass and approached the sullen form.

"Naota," she called, waving her hand over her, "Naota!"

Only slightly his shoulders rose to acknowledge the greeting, as Ninamori took her place next to him. Determined, she swallowed the lump swelling in her throat and began the annual crusade against his growing apathy.

"So is this what you plan on doing with your vacation, Naota? Hanging around like a delinquent?" she intoned bossily, trying to ignite any emotion inside the sunken form. Again the shoulders rose and fell, without much commitment, the eyes still vacantly searching the ground for a fragment of something, anything.

"Well, let me tell you something, I am not just going to hang around on this bridge with you," she continued, looking away and up into the clear sky, almost hoping despite herself and her own wishes that a vespa would come speeding down towards the ground and lay them out flat. _'That would illicit some response', _she thought bitterly. "Tomorrow, I figure it will be hot, I mean, it already is, but it's only going to get worse, so tomorrow we'll go to beach. We'll go swimming, yea? Maybe fishing to, do you still have you grandfathers rod?" Another shrug, "Well, i'll pack a picnic, and we'll bring our swimsuits and the rods, we'll make a day of it."

"Hmn." He raised his head and tilted to look at her, his eyes half closed against the sun, his head leaning towards the ground below. He looked, despite all the years that had passed, despite everything she had endeavored to do to change him, just like the twelve year old boy left in the rubble years ago. His eyes, following the matured contours of her face showed no affection or recognition, but almost a disinterested disappointment.

It didn't matter what girl approached him, batted her eyes at him, touched his arm suggestively, he regarded them all with the same absent eyes. If anything, she was lucky that she could illicit any response. The only one who could do better was Mamimi, and she was here less and less.

Ninamori couldn't blame her. She was getting older, she had her own life to consider. So now Ninamori was the only one left.

The only one left to try and put together the pieces broken by an attachment she couldn't understand.

_'How could a childhood crush render someone so pathetic?' _ she thought, venomously searching the sky once more before her eyes dropped down to the river below where her own reflection stood, tense and anxious next to Naota's slumped form. Close, but never close enough. Her blurred face obscured by the waves, but the expression of want, disappointment and need still easily readable. She sighed, the lump springing back into her throat, and placed her hand o Naota's shoulder.


	2. Summer Daze

Snapshot

Cap'n Coree

Chapter Two: Summer Daze

Naota had been collected. Into his hands Ninamori shoved towels, his fish trunks, and pole, and off they had walked together, the silence broken only occasionally by Ninamori's attempt at casual conversation.

"My dads trying to pursue another mistress," she joked, "but try not to let that weasel its way into the papers… To be honest I think this girl is too smart for him, she just lets him buy her presents and things, I don't think she's letting him get anywhere _romantic_"

Along the way they passed other kids, kids their own age budding out of childhood into the adult world, but all the more immature for it. They even passed Naota's old friends crowded on the beach with girls from their class drinking beers and wading the water.

For a moment Ninamori entertained the thoughts of another life, where her an Naota were blissfully ignorant, irresponsible. drinking beers on the beach and playing boy girl games. Instead Naota's been abducted by aliens and Ninamori's his body's keeper. It was tiresome. But it was her job, and she shouldered it the best she could. She set them up at a secluded part of the beach, arranging the umbrella over Naota's head as he stared vacantly into the ocean.

Eventually she goaded him into his swimsuit, and she changed into hers. She attempted to pull him to the ocean, but the best she got was to sit him in the shallows. She sat next to him, listening to the distant echoes of the adolescents down the way.

"Mamimi is coming home tomorrow," she said off hand, "she called me last night.."

She thought of the last time Mamimi had been n town, looking so successful, so adult, but still affecting that air of naivety and twisted innocence she carried with her like a hand bag. How the camera hung around her neck, how busy that camera was when she was here, taking pictures of her home town, her childhood.

The last night she was there she took Ninamori aside and looked at her sadly.

"Its falling all on you isn't it? I know you must be angry.. but take care of him, for me."

Ninamori was angry. Angry that she could request such a thing and then leave, if she cared for him so much, why didn't she stay? Ninamori felt like the youngest child of a dying widower. All the other children had grown up and went away, and now the duty fell upon her, simply because she was the last still there. Because she got caught..

"I know you will," Mamimi added sadly, smiling like someone at a funeral, "because you love Ta-kun too." And then she was gone, into the snowy night, back to her new world, a world of learning and expansion outside the town she had tried so hard to destroy, and the boy she clung to so hard to be safe, when he needed her the most.

But she was right, because Ninamori, like the child of a widower, felt such deep affection and obligation towards him that she would stay, stay and care for him when all others left. Even if the duty rested to heavily, and sometimes drove her to the verge of hate.

Naota came to, for a few seconds. It could have been because of the mention of Mamimi, but he came to, and saw the pained look on Ninamori's face, so he struggled against himself to stay for just a few moments, at least stay part way.

"Ninamori' he said, in the clearest voice she had heard in a long while, "Ninamori, do you… do you think we could get some beer?"

Ninamori was so stunned, she couldn't responded at first. The waves washed up to her mouth three times before she could find the strength to spit the water out and form her response.

"y-y-yes. I think I could do that for us." And then she was running, up the beach to her phone, to call in a favor from her father's secretary.


End file.
